Pious Deception (17 page)

“Well, I don’t know if I’d say a crook, but I wouldn’t put money on his integrity either. That’s the point: What was it that drew the two of them together? Zekk just wasn’t the type Austin would seek out.”

Fighting to conceal her frustration with the noncommittal Necri, she said, “So what’s your conclusion?”

Necri sighed. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. Now that I tell you this, it doesn’t seem worth a call, does it?” He paused—giving her time to reassure him? Kiernan wondered. “Maybe,” he went on, “it’s just that Austin’s death has unhinged me. You know if I hadn’t seen his body hanging there … I don’t know. But whatever Austin did see in Zekk, it was enough for him to pay Zekk two hundred dollars a month.”

Amazed, Kiernan swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. Her head pounded in response. “Austin paid Zekk two hundred a month! Why?”

“I have no idea,” Necri said.

“What do you mean you have no idea!” she shouted. “You’ve been thinking about this all day. You call me at ten
P.M.
Don’t ask me to believe you have no idea about Zekk and the two hundred dollars!”

If he was affronted, he gave no indication. “Maybe I’m just too tired to come up with an explanation. In honesty, I was hoping you would.”

Kiernan sighed. Clearly, Elias Necri was going to dribble out what facts or guesses he had at his own molasseslike pace. “How long had Vanderhooven been paying him?”

“Over a year. Maybe as long as Zekk lived out here.”

“Could it have been a business arrangement?”

She could hear Necri’s breath hitting the receiver. Then he said, “Not likely. Zekk’s only business, if you can call it that, is marketing some pottery for the locals up there. Even if he sold boxloads to Austin, it wouldn’t have come to two hundred dollars, not every single month.”

“Okay, so the two hundred wasn’t for the pottery. Then what?”

“I just don’t have any idea. The best I can do is let you know about it and hope it somehow helps to clear Austin’s name.”

Kiernan sighed. “Okay. I’ll give Zekk a go. Where can I find him?” she asked, hoping Necri might know of an in-town hangout of Zekk’s.

“That I don’t know. I don’t know where he lives. Sorry.”

His answer had come too quickly. If Elias Necri had been up to Bud Warren’s place in the mountains, he’d passed Zekk’s metal Z. He knew full well where Zekk lived. She had let him dribble out his bait long enough. Leaning back against the headboard, she said, “I guess this is a particularly hard time for you, Dr. Necri, this on top of your financial problems. And now there won’t be any job at the retreat for you to escape to. With Austin dead, who knows what will happen to the retreat, right?”

His breath came heavy against the receiver.

She waited, expecting Necri to recover and attempt a diversionary move. When he didn’t respond, she said, “So you’ve not only lost a friend, but your way out is gone, right?”

It was fully thirty seconds before he said, “I’ll work things out. I’ll just do it a different way.”

“How? Not by working on call in the mountains, that’s for sure.”

Was that a gasp from him?

“What did you get in return for signing the death certificate?” She waited. Necri might have been a pro, but he was definitely out of his league in this game.

He hung up.

Kiernan rolled onto her stomach, and dialed Stu Wiggins’s number. After the beep on his tape, she said, “First, Austin Vanderhooven’s retreat is no little cottage in the mountains. It was to be more like a sandstone Taj Mahal. Lots of money, lots of power.

“Second, Elias Necri just called and tried to aim me at Joe Zekk. Does he want me to hassle Zekk, or just get out of town and leave our Dr. Necri alone? Think about it, and come by at nine in the morning. Oh, and Stu—Listen, there’s someone at the door. I’ll call you back.”

She hung up the receiver; before she reached the door there was another knock.

“Who is it?” she called through the closed door.

“Sheriff’s office. Open up.”

She tensed. “Let me see some identification. Hold it up to the window.”

She pulled the drape. Parked by the window was a sheriff’s department car. A man, thirty-ish, in tan uniform, held a shield against the window. She opened the door.

“Dr. Kiernan O’Shaughnessy?”

“That’s right.”

“I have a warrant for your arrest.” He pulled out a card and began reading, “You have the right to remain …”

“Arrest! For what?”

Undaunted, he continued his Miranda recitation. When he finished, he pocketed the card and said, “Forgery and falsifying a public record.”

“What public record?”

“Sheriff’ll tell you that. He’s waiting for you at the station. Bring what you need for the night.”

“Wait. I have to make a phone call.”

“You can make your call from there.”

“At least let me take an Alka-Seltzer.”

He shook his head. “The sheriff’s waiting.”

T
HE TRIP TO
H
OHOKAM
Lodge had taken well over two hours. They could have made it in an hour and a half if Patsy had been driving. Patsy’s throat actually hurt from holding back; only once had she slipped and told Beth Landau to pass the goddamned—actually she hadn’t said “goddamned”; she hadn’t slipped that much—pickup that was going all of twenty miles an hour.

And the lodge! Patsy had pictured a lodge as a big stone country house where Rockefellers sprawled on leather couches under heads of moose and zebra, not a ratty, square wooden building with an oil heater in the fireplace and faded, stained sofas.

But she didn’t get to see the living room for long. One minute all the “guests” were in there listening to Beth tell them they would find cereal in the kitchen in the morning and a list of work assignments posted on the refrigerator door, and the next minute they were zonked out in the tiny unheated cells that passed for bedrooms. No showers, no nothing. The whole place was dark and silent, as if someone had plopped the hood on a bird cage.

Patsy’s cot almost filled all the space in the storeroom between the metal shelves and the windows. As soon as Patsy had seen the lodge, she’d known what her cot would be like: springs that poked out and squeaked every time she breathed; mattress rough as a dirt road after monsoon season, with a pissy smell. Still, she’d slept in worse places, plenty worse. For half an hour she investigated the contents of the metal shelves: generic-brand soap powder, paper plates, cartons of paper towels (white), cartons of toilet paper (single ply, white), a hundred-pound bag of rice, an equally big bag of potatoes, six packages of flour tortillas—what was with all this white? Was this some kind of social-work way to calm the guests? Or was it to save on food? No one was going to be asking for seconds here. Patsy reached into her purse, in the hope that she had thought to bring a chocolate bar. She hadn’t. Disgusted, she sat on the cot and leaned back, squeakily, against the wall.

Were those footsteps in the hall? She held herself dead still. Could it be the prowler Beth had told her about? Slowly, she got up. The springs squeaked. At the door she paused, listened. They were footsteps all right, but not the prowler’s. Too soft to be a man’s.

She eased open the door. There was no light in the hallway that separated the bedrooms from the living room. All the bedroom doors were closed. No light seeped from under any of them. It was dark, but she could just make out a figure heading toward the window at the far end of the hall. As Patsy watched, the shade was lifted and Beth Landau stood silhouetted by the moonlight. Patsy could see her peering out, moving her head very slowly, as if surveying the land outside.

Patsy stepped out. “What are you doing?”

Beth spun around. The moonlight showed the fear on her face.

“It’s the prowler, isn’t it? You were checking for the prowler.”

“No. There’s nothing to worry about.” She put a hand on Patsy’s arm.

Fighting the urge to shake it off, Patsy said, “Beth,
you’re
worried.” Reminding herself to stay in character, she patted Beth’s hand. “Look, I’m awake. I’m strong. I can help you.”

“It’s okay.”

“I know you think I can’t take care of myself. Why else would I be here, right?” Beth’s hand tensed on her arm. Patsy swallowed a smile of victory. “But I don’t panic. I can help—if you’re straight with me.”

Beth pulled her hand free. “Look,” she whispered, “it’s no big deal, but I have had a prowler. He’s never harmed anyone. He’s never even come inside as far as I know. But it’s just, well, I feel I ought to check.”

“How often does he come?”

“Sometimes twice in a week, sometimes not for a couple of weeks.”

Patsy walked to the front window and looked out at the hard ground that sloped down from the lodge, at the saguaro and ocotillo, at the bare, dry dirt. With all those stars and the moon, it was plenty light enough to spot a prowler out there. She leaned against the window frame, forcing Beth to stand in the moonlight facing her. Watching her reaction, Patsy asked, “Do you have any idea who he is?”

Beth ran her teeth over her lower lip.

“You do, don’t you?”

Stiffly, Beth nodded. “I’m sure it’s a friend of a friend, a guy in the neighborhood. He’s not a danger to any of the guests here.”

“What about to you?”

Beth shrugged, but her face remained tense. “He’s not likely to hurt me, not physically. He’s more of a nuisance than a threat.”

“So why don’t you call the sheriff when you see him?”

“Because I don’t want to make things worse than they already are here. I’ve got women here who are poised right on the edge. All they need is to have the sheriff’s men hanging around in the middle of the night. I can’t do that to them.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Too long. I know that. It’s just, well, the time is never right to deal with it.”

Patsy wanted to shake her, to tell the dumb fool how to deal with this asshole. Instead, she swallowed hard and said, “What’s this guy after?”

“I told you—”

“This place is five feet off the ground. From out there, you can’t see anything unless someone’s standing right by the window. No pervert’s going to come back here week after week in hopes of seeing that. He’s been inside, hasn’t he?” When Beth didn’t answer, Patsy grabbed her arm. She didn’t shake her, not quite. “Hasn’t he!”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I couldn’t prove anything. I thought something was gone. But it’s not. Maybe it never was. I just have a feeling he’s been in my office.” She looked straight at Patsy. In the moonlight her face looked powder-white; even her freckles were pale. “But I could be wrong. Listen, you’ve got enough to worry about without—”

“Forget it,” Patsy said, giving the arm a squeeze and releasing it. “It’s good to think about somebody else’s problems for a change. Look, if I can help you, it’s going to make me feel a lot better about myself,” she added, in the kind of social-work talk Beth would understand.

“Okay. If you see anything, knock on my door. It’s the one at the end of the hall, nearest the office.” She smiled. “And thanks, Patsy.”

“Sure.” Patsy walked back to her room, wondering how long she would have to wait to get into that office.

F
EW THINGS AGGRAVATE A
headache more, Kiernan thought, than being hauled into the sheriff’s office in the middle of the night. What a great Alka-Seltzer commercial this would make: “Sheriff pounding on your head? Plop plop, fizz fizz.”

The sheriff’s deputy held open the gate in the pine counter. “Right this way, Miss—”

“Doctor,” she snapped, without thinking. But the title had its effect.

“Right this way,
Doctor
,” he said with slightly less assurance.

The county sheriff’s department was lodged in a small weathered building with a covered walkway out front. It could have housed a sheriff when this area south of Phoenix was still Wild West. Everything about it was old, faded, and sere, as if the desert air had sucked it dry. It smelled of dust and ground-in grime and sour coffee.

Kiernan followed the deputy—tall, young, and apparently too dry of mouth to utter an unnecessary word—through the counter to the hallway that bisected the building. Above scuffed pine wainscoting the tan wall was dotted with clusters of thumbtack holes and rectangles of varying shades where notices had been hung over the years. Modern art, administrative style.

The deputy motioned Kiernan to the first door, into a room with a scarred wooden desk and two chairs. Silently, he indicated a chair for her, then reached into the drawer and came up with an ink pad and sheet with ten square boxes on it.

Kiernan recognized the booking form. “I’m not doing anything till I make my phone call, and until I talk to the sheriff,” she said barely controlling her anger. This sheriff’s department was not in Tempe, near her motel, but in the county of Mission San Leo. The deputy who had come for her had plunked her in the back of the patrol car, which smelled of ammonia and vomit. The window didn’t open, and of course the car wasn’t air-conditioned. The drive had taken half an hour. Four or five bumps had bounced her nearly to the ceiling; even small jolts had reverberated through her head. And the deputy had ignored every one of her questions.

“We’ll do the booking first, Mi—, Doctor.”

“I thought you said the sheriff was waiting for me.”

“He is.”

“Then please,” she said through gritted teeth, “take me to him.”

“Just as soon as we—”

“Now!”

“Just as soon—”

She leaned forward on the desk. “You book me, and you’re talking a false-arrest charge. Not just the department but you personally, since you seem to be taking this upon yourself.”

The deputy let a smile cross his tanned face. “You’re from California, right,
Doctor
?”

She could see it in his small hazel eyes, that speed-trap mentality. “Right,” she said, “but my boss isn’t. He’s a Phoenix lawyer.”

The deputy ran his finger across the booking form. His smile did not fade.

This was one round she was not going to win this way. Taking a breath, she reconsidered. When she spoke her voice was calmer. “You know how much time you can waste going to court. Judges postpone. Lawyers can get one continuance after another. And that’s before the trial starts. Every day that happens, you have to show up in court, on your own time. You know that. On a day when you could be in the mountains fishing, you’ll be hanging around for a one o’clock court date.” She didn’t need to look twice to see that he’d had an experience like that. She said, “I used to work for the coroner’s office. I know about that. But look, you and I are both just trying to save some time. You don’t want to get hung up in court, and I don’t want to spend time with booking and records and then hassle getting them cleared. The sheriff and I can handle this. Okay?”